In 2004 the FDA held two hearings on antidepressants and suicide, mainly in children. One was February 2, 2004 and the other September 13, 2004. They concluded that a Black Box Warning should be on the label of all antidepressants – any that had ever been approved and any to be approved in the future. We are gradually posting all of those testimonies on our website at www.drugawareness.org for the world to hear what the FDA heard that day from those who suffered it and from loved ones who lost loved ones to this deadly side effect. They also warned that abrupt changes in dose of an antidepressant, whether an increase or decrease, could cause suicide, hostility, or psychosis. And within a very short time added the suicidal ideation warning to many other medications including the serotonergic atypical antipsychotics and the anti-seizure medications including drugs like Neurontin (Gabapentin) which seems to be being prescribed for anything you can think of in spite of Pfizer paying out unheard of fines for encouraging doctors to prescribe off label for things it has never been approved for. They have even been found guilty criminally for racketeering (RICO) over this.

Sadly since 2004 this warning about suicidal ideation has been downplayed by Pharma and doctors on a regular basis to patients and their loved ones. Few even know what suicidal ideation or homicidal ideation is. So, we have started a new Facebook group for both side effects at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/579195432286469

Suicidal and homicidal ideations are not just the act of killing oneself or others. It is a continuous compulsion with ruminating thoughts of both killing and ruminating thoughts of various methods of doing so. So ruminating and continuous that one cannot think of much of anything else. Here are two real life experiences from patients in their own words to give you an example of both antidepressant-induced suicidal ideation & antidepressant-induced homicidal ideation-reports I have listened to for over two decades from people age 5 to 90:

“Homicidal Ideation” Described by Patient Who Suffered

This Antidepressant-Induced Side Effect

“Only two days on Zoloft and I wanted death bad – I wanted death like I wanted a new Ferrari…

but I wanted it not just for me, but for everyone!!!”

“I am a veteran of 15 years. I have seen the disasters from prescription medications especially the ones we were issued to treat PTSD and other mental illnesses. A couple of years ago, I agreed to take Zoloft as suggested by my doctor for depression. I had denied it for years.

“Within 2 days I waas truly suicidal. I wanted death bad. It wasn’t like the normal suicidal thoughts where I felt so depressed I would rather be dead, it was more like I wanted death like I wanted a new Ferrari. But not just for me, I wanted it for everyone! I wanted to get my friends together and thought let’s all die together. I have been confused by how this drug can make you feel this way. I certainly felt why so many commit suicide on these drugs and why it is a listed side effect! I tried to OD, but I sucked at it fortunately. I never touched another pill again.

“I got out of the Army last year and have been on a spiritual journey for myself.” … C. C. D.

“Suicidal Ideation” Described by Patient Who Suffered

This Antidepressant-Induced Side Effect

” Suicidal compulsions from these drugs are strong, overwhelming and almost impossible to fight!”

“I can tell you from experience because it happened to me. I was never suicidal. I never had anxiety. I took these drugs for over 20 years but then it happened. The drug affected my mind and my brain and my central nervous system. When the suicidal thoughts are caused from the medicine they are strong and overwhelming and almost impossible to fight. If people could feel just for one hour how you feel when this happens then they would understand and all these drugs would be pulled from the market immediately. It’s not the same as being sad and feeling like you don’t want to go on. It’s more like something telling you how worthless and no good you are and you have to die over and over. It affects your emotions and all your thoughts. Think the worst saddest most horrible thing that ever happened to you then having your brain stuck in that place and be unable to feel any positive emotion. That’s how it feels.

“I hated guns and would never even think about owning one but the thought that was in my head over and over and over was to get a gun and kill myself. That’s not even like me. There were times that it would not let up. I would scream out loud “Stop! Leave me alone” still the thoughts persisted. That’s why I was so afraid to be alone. Your mind is completely changed ( physically changed) so that you can see/feel nothing good. Your whole reality is changed . Your thoughts are all that seems real when it happens. Nothing else.

“The worst part is you feel like you are worthless and shouldn’t be alive. Your mind is so confused that you don’t even realize that it’s the medicine. I STRONGLY feel that there should be more warnings besides just saying it can make you suicidal. My idea of suicidal ideation was much different than what happened to me. I didn’t realize that it would be an compulsion to die that ruminates over and over in your head and allowing few other thoughts to enter . That is what should be listed in the warning.”… Helen Marie Daff

1996 Study – Mutant Mice May Hold Key To Human Violence

– An Excess Of Serotonin.

The Fierce Tempers of Mutant Rodents Born With Their Brains Awash in the Chemical Serotonin May Provide a Clue to Violent Behavior Among Humans

June 06, 1996|TERENCE MONMANEY | TIMES MEDICAL WRITER

The scientist grabs Mutant #9 by the tail, lifts the mouse out of its shoebox-size cage, and lowers it gently into another, identical container, the reeking, sawdust-floored home of Mutant #4.
Blind and jittery, the mice are freaks of nature, products of a genetic engineering experiment that did not go exactly as planned. But, oddly, their encounter in this fifth-floor laboratory at the USC School of Pharmacy may reveal something vital about human nature.

They square off, sniffing furiously, then inch closer. Within seconds, #9 corners #4. And then they dive at each another–a rolling, squeaking, clawing gray blur. Sawdust and fur fly.

Jean Chen Shih, a USC biochemist and promoter of this unlikely murine bout, jumps back, startled by the attack even though she was expecting it. “Normal mice fight also, but not so rapidly as these,” Shih says.

By any measure, the mice, called Tg8, are among the most aggressive in captivity.

This odd little spectacle is part of the quest for answers to the violence clawing at American’s soul. A Tg8 is born with its brain awash in an excess of serotonin, a neurotransmitter chemical that helps regulate mood and mental health, and Shih and her co-workers believe that that excess greatly contributes to the mouse’s fierce temper.

To be sure, a brawl between blind mice in an ivory tower is a far cry from the mayhem and brutality perfected by such brainy animals as ourselves. But the work does appear to touch on human experience: The Tg8’s cardinal biochemical defect was originally discovered in numerous related Dutchmen who committed arson, attempted rape and assault.

The Tg8 mice are the first laboratory animals to share both the biochemical defect and the behavior observed in a pedigree of violent criminals. In that sense, the mice are an important new tool for probing the physiology of running amok. By studying the mice’s trigger-happy biology, researchers hope to understand aggression better and perhaps develop new drugs that control it.

But for every potential new use of such information, critics envision a new abuse. Steven Rose, a biologist at the Open University in England, is an outspoken critic of the idea that one’s genetic makeup determines behavior–a scientific premise he calls “neurogenetic determinism.”

Sociologist Dorothy Nelkin of New York University says that conservatives might seize on biological explanations of violence to “dismantle the welfare state,” because controlling aggression with drugs could well be much cheaper than rehabilitation programs.

She also fears that if certain biochemical signatures became associated with violence or criminal behavior, people with such a makeup could be wrongly implicated and stigmatized as potential threats to society–the physiological equivalent of a bad credit rating. The Tg8 research and similar studies, she says, “open up a whole set of problems that are worthy of careful consideration.”

No such heady dilemmas weighed upon scientists at the Pasteur Institute near Paris when they accidentally created the Tg8 mouse strain two years ago. Olivier Cases and colleagues were trying to develop a novel gene therapy by injecting a one-celled embryo of a special lab strain of blind mice with a shred of foreign DNA. But instead of resulting in a “new” mouse pup with a bolstered immune system, the experiment led to a strain of male mice with a really bad temper.

The first indicator of that ill nature was painfully obvious: The mice nipped the researchers’ fingers. When caged together, male Tg8s–the Tg is for “transgenic”–tore each other apart. And the researchers also found that when male and female mice mated, the males were especially quick, grabby and forceful, eliciting more female squeaks, on average, than other males did.

Those traits may be reminiscent of any number of men, but the French researchers were put in mind of certain Dutch males in one extended family described in the medical literature. Over four generations, a remarkable number of those males were accused or convicted of rape, assault and arson, leading local psychologists as well as law enforcement authorities to watch them very closely.

After much study, Dutch scientists reported a finding in 1993 that, they believed, helped explain the aggressive males’ behavior: They were missing an enzyme called monoamine oxidase A, or MAO-A, which breaks down a variety of neurotransmitters, including serotonin. Lacking the MAO-A enzyme, the affected males, who also had borderline mental retardation, had extra-high levels of several neurotransmitters, including serotonin.

The genetic defect found in the violent Dutchmen is probably very rare, researchers say, and certainly doesn’t account for what makes most aggressive people act that way. Still, the finding offers a unique window into how disruptions in brain chemistry can be correlated with a pattern of antisocial behavior.

Given the Dutch findings, then, it was logical for the sore-fingered French researchers to want to know if their mutant mice also lacked the MAO enzyme. That’s where Shih, a world expert on that family of enzymes, came in. Not long after she agreed to test the Tg8 mice for the enzyme, a shipment of the creatures arrived from France (having spent weeks in quarantine at Los Angeles International Airport).

It took Shih and her co-workers several months of painstaking lab work to establish that the male mice were indeed lacking the gene for the MAO-A enzyme–just like the affected Dutchmen. “When this gene is missing, the animals are very aggressive and hyperactive,” Shih says.

Her Tg8 study, says Randy Nelson, a behavioral psychologist at Johns Hopkins University, was “one of the first to show a biological mechanism for aggressive behavior in an animal.” Follow-up studies published this spring in the journal Neuron suggest that the neurotransmitter defect actually affects the structure of the Tg8’s brain, most likely by skewing growth and development in fetal and newborn mice.

Nelson says it’s no surprise that genes affect temperament. “Anybody who knows the difference between a pit bull and a Labrador retriever knows that aggressive behavior has a genetic basis,” he says.

Some researchers expect that the biochemical analysis of behavior will pay off. Dr. Frederick Moeller, a psychiatrist at the University of Texas in Houston, hopes that the missing-enzyme research leads to new drugs for treating criminals and other violent people who simply can’t control their aggression. “I treat individuals who . . . can’t keep from assaulting hospital staff even long enough to get out of the hospital,” he says.

“The goal isn’t to control everybody and make them less aggressive,” he says. “The goal is to work with real people who have a real problem with aggression.”

For her part, Shih is a little dismayed to find herself in the middle of such a hot controversy. “I like to avoid the political issues,” the biochemist says.

Even though she is no sociologist, Shih believes that she can make a contribution to understanding human behavior by studying the Tg8’s biology.

That possibility is apparent to her whenever she returns the mice to their cages in the locked, windowless animal room across the hall from her office. Normal mice fare perfectly well living four to a cage. But the Tg8 males are held in solitary confinement, too hostile for mouse society.

A Tg8 is born with its brain awash in an excess of serotonin, a neurotransmitter chemical that helps regulate mood and mental health, and [Jean Chen] Shih and her co-workers believe that that excess greatly contributes to the mouse’s fierce temper.

A Tg8 is born with its brain awash in an excess of serotonin, a neurotransmitter chemical that helps regulate mood and mental health, and [Jean Chen] Shih and her co-workers believe that that excess greatly contributes to the mouse’s fierce temper.

The scientist grabs Mutant 9 by the tail, lifts the mouse out of its cage, and lowers it into another, identical container, the reeking, sawdust-floored home of Mutant 4. Blind and jittery, the mice are freaks of nature, products of a genetic engineering experiment that did not go exactly as planned. But, oddly, their encounter in this fifth-floor laboratory at the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy may reveal something vital about human nature. This odd little spectacle is part of the quest for answers to the violence clawing at America’s soul. A Tg8 is born with its brain awash in an excess of serotonin, a neurotransmitter chemical that helps regulate mood and mental health, and [Jean Chen] Shih and her co-workers believe that that excess greatly contributes to the mouse’s fierce temper.

She has specialized since 1990 in adverse reactions to serotonergic medications (such as Prozac, Sarafem, Zoloft, Paxil, Luvox, Celexa, Lexapro, Effexor, Serzone, Remeron, Anafranil, Fen-Phen, Redux and Meridia as well as the new atypical antipsychotics Zyprexa, Geodon, Seroquel and Abilify), as well as pain killers, and has testified before the FDA and congressional subcommittee members on antidepressants.

WITHDRAWAL WARNING: In sharing this information about adverse reactions to antidepressants I always recommend that you also give reference to my CD on safe withdrawal, Help! I Can’t Get Off My Antidepressant!, so that we do not have more people dropping off these drugs too quickly – a move which I have warned from the beginning can be even more dangerous than staying on the drugs!

WITHDRAWAL HELP: You can find the hour and a half long CD on safe and effective withdrawal helps here: store.drugawareness.org And if you need additional consultations with Ann Blake-Tracy, you can book one at www.drugawareness.org or sign up for one of the memberships for the International Coalition for Drug Awareness which includes free consultations as one of the benefits of that particular membership plan. You can even get a whole month of access to the withdrawal CD with tips on rebuilding after the meds, all six of my DVDs, hundreds of radio interviews, lectures, TV interviews I have done over the years PLUS my book on antidepressants with more information than you will find anywhere else for only $30 membership for a month (that is only $5 more than the book alone would cost) at www.drugawareness.org. (Definitely the best option to save outrageous postage charges for those out of the country!)

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